well, went to watch a tae kwon do class tonight. here's how it went first 20 minutes - warm ups. different punches and kicks with all belts. second 20+ minutes - each belt group did a form that they were working on last 20-30 minutes - sparring. lower belts did non-contact sparing, higher belts did contact sparring. there were 8 students in the class, ranging from white to black belt. how does this sound? about what should be going on? thanks!
How was it exactly? Were the warm-ups good (was everybody dead tired after them, was there a variety of warm ups)? Did the higher belts do their forms crappily (studder on moves, no power or snap in movement, no balance)? If all that was ok, then I'd say it's a good dojang. It's also good that there aren't many people. Instructor(s) can give more attention to you. PL
The warm ups were pretty good. They did a lot of different ones. The instructor was making sure everybody's positions were correct and if not, telling them how to fix it. The only thing that concerned me when i was talking to him afterwards he was telling me about belt testins and said since they test every 2 months, if a person passes every test they could achieve black belt in a year and a half. But he also said it would be rather hard to do, so I don't know. I want to make sure I'm doing things perfectly before I get a belt promotion. I know I'll have to switch dojos after college (I have 3 sememsters left) and I want to make sure where ever i switch to will agree that i have the expertise required for the belt level i'm at. I think I'd be concerned how well I'd measure up no matter where I train at though. (When I did ballet I knew I was pretty good, but I always worried if I would have to switch studios how I would measure up.)
abby, First thing, I and I'm sure that I speak for many on this forum, I'm happy for you that you started classes, I think you will be glad you did. DIfferent schools do things somewhat different as far as what a typical class contains. At my school, at a typical class, we spend approx 15-20 minutes warm-up ( jacks, streaching, abb work). Then we will spend 35-40 minutes doing one thing, could be form, or it could be pad work, or sparring, or self defense, whatever. Then we will spend 15 minutes doing two man streaching, then warm-down. A typical class is 1.5 hours. The advantage of doing it this way (specializing on one thing per class) is that you get to put more time into it, the negative is that if you miss the class, it could be weeks before you get to do it again. In your case, since you are going to be switching schools in a while, I would not be as concerned as I normally would with the time to Black Belt with your school. You have the right spirit in that you want to know the material before you advance in rank. If I were you, I would take the belt tests as soon as your instructor says you can. If you feel you are not ready, just work on your rough spots on your own time, make yourself ready. If you try to compare your progress by those who are higher ranking color belts or Black Belts, especally this early into your training, you may never be satisfied enough with your progress to advance. Try to get as much as you can from this school and keep everyone posted on your progress. I suspect that your background in dance is going to serve you well in the martial arts. Welcome to the wonderful world of TKD! Tom
My thoughts? Small class size is great, but having students at all levels in the same class is a little odd. Most schools I've seen split the groups up more than that. For example, one class will have whites and yellows, another class will have blues and greens, and so on. I would never go to a school with this system. First, I have a feeling that you have to pay to test for a belt. So if you fail, you pay even more $$$ for nothing. Also, a black belt in a year and a half is extremely optimistic, and practically impossible if the class only meets 2-4 times a week and only spend about 20 minutes a class on forms. Even if someone practices in their free time, a year and a half for a black belt seems quite rushed. It took me a little less than a month to get my yellow sash (Kung Fu uses sashes) from my current school. However, I had trained in MA for a year and a half while I was in college (which was a couple years ago), and I spent 6 months of that in Kung Fu. Ordinarily it would take about a month and a half to get yellow sash, and that's the easiest sash to make. Also, I probably spend about 45 minutes per class just on forms. Sparring is a completely different class, which many of us add on. He would be a complete fool if he said it was going to be easy. It's bad for business if you have people coming in wanting to learn martial arts and you tell them that they'll have a black belt quick and it won't even take a whole lot of work. People would be wary of an instructor like that. As much as I hope you do get involved in MA, I would be really careful of this school.
Abby: It sounds like you had a pretty good class... for that I am glad. HitNRun's post was pretty spot-on in my opinion as well. My advice in addition would be to train hard and not worry about the testing schedules. Your skill, hard work and performance is all that really matters. Whatever rank you earn here may or may not transfer to another school...but your abilities will. So, train hard and learn all you can... when you move to another school, bring your abilities and good attitude with you and all should be well. Keep us informed! Good training!
It's the same with my school. ~12 adults total, and half of them are on/off practitioners. So on average we get 6 people, and the belts really vary. Right now we have 4 yellows, 1 orange, 2 purple, 1 green, 3 red, 1 black, including me. Doing forms and such is a pain, since everybody is doing something different. PL
That's my point. Even with the classes split apart in our school, we still usually have two instructors (one sifu and the other is her assistant) for a class of anything over a half a dozen. I generally aim for the smaller classes where there's less than a half dozen of us all doing the same thing. This does remind me of a school I went to in New York. It was a small school, and it was one of the more contemporary mixed martial arts styles. Students of every and any rank would be at any given class. We would work more on sparring and "combos" than on forms. I ended up ending my membership when I began to suspect that what he was teaching was (for a lack of a better word) fake. He used japanese words to explain movements that were clearly from mantis style kung fu. Furthermore, his Japanese was pretty bad. All of his phrasings and grammar were always slightly off. Not to mention that forms that he "created" had certain basic flaws... In any case, abby, I'm not saying that your school is as bad as this one in NY (I doubt that), but it's well worth doing more research.
Starboy, On the other hand, being in a small class with higher ranking students is good for the beginner. I'm sure you know that if you put 2 beginners together, they will both keep making the same mistakes, but a beginner with an advanced student will learn from that student. The "looser" if you want to call it that is the advanced student, he doesn't get to work with someone who can challenge his abilities when paired up with a beginner. The advanced student gets to teach the beginner, which had it's rewards though. Very early on, I sparred with black belts and it helped me a lot. Tom
In a class that small, I think the benefits of being around a black belt is muted. After all, it's the instructor's responsibility to correct the students. Then again, the instructor probably does this because s/he doesn't have enough students to divide classes by rank. It could be worse. I've seen TKD franchise schools that have 30-40 to a class and they're ranked from white to black. It makes it difficult to learn anything at any level, and it shows in the performance of the black belts. At this school, the black belts were making some really basic mistakes (in form and technique) that could have been easily corrected if the instructor was a little more attentitive.
